


There Are No Innocent Questions

by 23Murasaki, Stormysongbird



Series: (re)Written!Verse [6]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alcohol, Drugs, F/M, Gen, Truth Serum, drinking with the enemy, set post chapter 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 17:59:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12799416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormysongbird/pseuds/Stormysongbird
Summary: Ethan Rayne needed to find out for himself what was going on. And of course there are better ways than asking questions...





	There Are No Innocent Questions

**Author's Note:**

> Hi Everyone,
> 
> This style of fic is going to be a little different from our usual. Instead of one of us writing and the other one editing, 23Murasaki and I did sort of a literate roleplay between Jenny and Ethan. Stormysonbird is Jenny and 23Murasaki is Ethan. Please let us know how you feel about this style of writing and we hope you enjoy!
> 
> Sidenote: We are aware that the word Gypsy has certain negative and often insulting connotations. If anyone is offended by this we are very very sorry. However we are also bound by the canon set forth by Joss Whedon, who drops that word like it's hot. Please be rest assured, as the kalderash are a real and current ethnic group, SO MUCH RESEARCH, has been conducted and performed to create the most accurate experience possible.

Silence was good, silence was golden. Silence in her head even more so. So, when a knock on the door shattered that numbing silence, Jenny Calendar could be forgiven a couple of curses under her breath. She wasn't expecting anyone. If it was those Goddess damned religious freaks again she was going to throw her large number of pentagrams at them and personally introduce them to her statue of Inanna. Minor Sumerian goddess but the statue always looked a bit startling when you didn't know who she was.

Couldn’t a girl be left to stew in the total and complete pile of shit she had made her life?

Opening the door Jenny blinked at the bright sunlight and the visitor. "What now?"

\---

If his unofficial student was to be believed, Ripper had killed himself over being scorned in love. Ethan was pretty sure Ripper was too… well, probably too stubborn to do something like that, and besides, he’d checked. Dead men didn’t over-enunciate obscenities over the phone and hang up on you before you can say ‘hello, old friend, you’re an idiot and I could have warned you’. Under normal circumstances, though, there’d be a ‘Rupert Giles speaking, oh it’s you, Ethan go away’ and then some snippy banter, so it was clear the man was in trouble.

Ethan loved trouble.

Of course, the only difficulty here was that he was rather fond of Ripper, too. Old friends and all that. That meant something, history meant something, even for a servant of Chaos.

So, on one hand, he had the delightful chaos that always came when something lovely fell apart, complete with crying children – he’d sent his student home with a bunch of Greek translations and instructions to bring him several different sorts of mostly harmless herbs – out of control rumors, copious amounts of alcohol and escapism, the destruction of other, unrelated relationships. He could really revel in that—and what had it taken? Barely anything at all from him. They’d gone and done it all by themselves!

And on the other hand, he had a woman who had apparently broken his dear, dear Ripper’s heart. No one broke Ripper’s heart and got away with it, no matter how fun the results. Tangentially, he also had a heartbroken and vulnerable Ripper holed up in his flat and drinking himself half to death, which was definitely worth noting for later.

But more important things first. Celebration or revenge? He really wasn’t sure which to go for, not when he packed a bag and strolled out of his motel and not when he was already on Jenny Calendar – Janna Kalderash! Ha!—‘s doorstep. Hm. Well, he could have both. It wasn’t like he could kill her, really, not now. Everyone would know it was him, and that wouldn’t do.

So he knocked on the door and schooled his face into an expression of polite concern while he waited. People usually bought the polite concern act for… long enough, yeah? Yeah.

“What now?” Jenny appears, blinking in sunlight and looking rather terrible. Ooh, maybe the heartbreak cut both ways here—better and better, and just like Ripper too. Never one for doing things by halves.

“Jenny! Oh dear, something really has gone terribly, hasn’t it?” Did that sound concerned enough? Possibly the woman was in too poor a state to really tell. “I heard on the teenaged grapevine that… well, that Rupert walked out on you. And after you were possessed and everything! That man was always the cruel sort…” Oops, a bit too much sincerity in that last part. Sincerity wouldn’t do. “I er… I brought brownies. And alcohol.” The alcohol is completely normal gin. Half the brownies are laced with a truth serum.

Whatever he was going to do, it was going to be fun.

\---

She knew she must look at least as bad as she felt. Jenny contemplated slamming the door in the slimy man’s face. Or at least telling him to leave the food and booze before she slammed it in his face. Yeah that was better. She did not have the energy for witty word battles right now. Most of her energy had gone to scrubbing the walls and the floors by hand, at least the place smelled lemony fresh.  
The news had spread. Of course it had. Jenny hadn’t been a teacher a full day before learning how powerful a teenage grapevine was. They’d probably all banded around Rupert too. Not that she blamed them all that much. She was the one who had lied to them all that time. The outsider in the group. The one who had said no to the ring. She swallowed that down. It was no wonder he had “walked out” as Ethan had said. Well didn’t that just make her feel worse.

And why couldn’t the Hellmouth set just let her eat ice cream, watch Terms of Endearment and cry in peace? Instead they had to send this!

On the other hand...Rupert was way more likely to talk to slimy Ethan than to her right now. And she was concerned about him.

Fine.

“I don’t have any tonic.” She said shortly, standing aside to let him in.

\---

He really was expecting to have to needle her more. She did know him a bit, after all, and most people who knew Ethan didn’t like him all that much. And yet, and yet, instead of slamming the door in his face and making him plead through a keyhole or something, she’d glared, then deflated and let him in. Just like that! And not even a mean-spirited comment out of her.

Naughty Ripper, leaving a woman in this state! Something bad could happen to her! Well, it was pretty likely something bad was about to happen to her.

“One can live without tonic,” he said. “Drink enough, and it stops tasting funny. Or chase with something sweet until it stops tasting funny. Either way, I find it’s effective.”

The apartment was impeccably clean. She must have been cleaning all morning and possibly all night, because there was no sign of his chalk wards or the vampire-related scuffles that had followed. Impressive! He is almost certain no flat of his had ever been this clean in literally his entire life!

“Stress cleaning, is it?” he asked setting his ‘gifts’ on a kitchen table he could almost catch his own reflection in. “Or out with the old? Either way, rather a more useful way of dealing with heartbreak than most. I was always partial to overconsumption and debauchery myself.”

That was actually true. Perhaps he would have ended up in a different situation if his response to pain was cleaning rather than hallucinogens. Perhaps not. Even twenty years on, he couldn’t remember what had happened in the week after Ripper had walked out on him. It had involved at least one tattoo, though, and he rather liked that tattoo so it was a moot point really.

Anyway, he was here to drug the woman and possibly torture her, not commiserate with her.

“Chocolate’s a fair middle ground, I’d say.” He unwrapped the plate and held it out toward her. Lucky he had a good memory and knew where the drugged ones were… “Brownie?”

\---

She really should have known better. Letting a man who’s aura set off that many alarm bells into her home? But he had saved her life. Or at least her sanity, putting up the wards inside her home. She owed him that much. Now they were square. The booze and brownies were a perk. One false move, he was out, and she was back to ice cream and tragic movie goodbyes.

Walking into her kitchen Jenny opened a cabinet and pulled out two glasses and two plates. She’d just scoured this whole cursed place from top to bottom. She was not dealing with crumbs in the couch. No ice for the gin either. She was drinking it straight.

“Damage control.” She said curtly as she placed the glasses down on her coffee table. She would watch him pour, and take the first drink. She was tired not stupid. “After you stretched your wards all over my entire apartment I had to get rid of it before the landlord saw and kicked me out.” If she was really “out with the old” as he’d said, she would have gotten rid of the signs, the essence of Rupert that was still saturating the place. She’d even had to push back his tea stash to get to the glasses.

Sitting on the couch she moved the aphgan out of the way and hesitantly took a brownie. Breaking off a piece she rolled it in her fingers, studying it. Trying to see if there was anything else there besides chocolate chips. Not seeing anything she popped the morsel into her mouth.

\---

Oh. Landlords. Right. It had been a while since he had had anything approaching a permanent place of residence, so he could probably be forgiven for not thinking about that at all. Motels and the like cared a bit less about what you left on the walls, so long as you could pay. Or, at least, by the time his motel rooms were completely trashed, he was usually ready to move out and move on.  
Plates, couch, matching glasses that didn’t look like they’d been pinched from somewhere. Looseleaf tea in one of the cabinets. Damage control. Is this the sort of person Ripper liked, nowadays? Well, they hadn’t lasted, so maybe not.

“Sorry about that,” he says easily. “I’m sure there are more effective ways to ward, but I admit I… panicked a bit.”

Again, not a lie. He’d come over to start a fight, not get a head full of unplanned and self-contradicting demonic whispers. Even a few minutes of it had been enough to put his back up.  
She didn’t seem to trust the gin, so he poured some out for both of them and took a long drink. Funny. He’d hated the taste once. He remembered that much. He’d also been scared of the dark once, and that had turned out fine. Hadn’t it? He shoved half a not-drugged brownie into his mouth instead of pondering the topic further. Time to test that truth serum! He’d never used it before, but this was as good a time as any. He just wished he’d have thought to bring a pen and paper. Ripper used to tell him it wasn’t a proper experiment unless things got recorded. Then again, it would probably give him away.

“I don’t mean to pry–“ Oh yes he did. “–but how long were you in here before I came in and started drawing on your walls?”

\---

Seeing the gin was safe, Jenny picked up her own glass and knocked it back in one go. The burn felt good on her throat. She hadn’t exactly felt like leaving the house so her alcohol stash had been pretty bleak when this whole thing had started. Why did nobody deliver in Sunnydale? Well okay why did nobody deliver booze in Sunnydale. She used to be concerned about Rupert’s drinking. She remembered something he’d said once when he’d been particularly in his cups.

“When it’s out in public it’s a problem. When it’s in your home it’s nobody’s bloody business.”

Jenny decided that made sense so she poured herself another. It looked like a particularly good brand too. Ethan Rayne, finally good for something. Besides giving her a view into what Rupert had been once. Transient, shifty, self serving. Carefree, wild, passionate. Well, a little of Ripper had still stuck around.

There she was thinking about him again. Jenny took another swallow of gin. Only half the glass this time. Plus a little more brownie just to have something in her stomach.

“You panicked all over my furniture, walls, curtains.” A ward three feet around the couch would have done it. Excessive.

“In my home?” Well that was a stupid question. “Since eleven the night before.”

\---

Well, it wasn’t like he was an expert on warding either. No formal training one way or another, and there was only so much one could learn from books and strange demons you pick up in pubs. Ripper got formal training. It crossed his mind that Jenny had gotten some too, or at least Janna had. Oh, good. Another thing to be uncomfortably jealous over.

“I’m sure you’d have done it better,” he said. “Rupert certainly would have. The Watcher’s Council likes its protective spells. How long have you been studying magic anyway?”

The day before, he’d had a specific question about her clan’s particular brand of spellwork, but for the life in him he couldn’t remember what it was. Something about demons. Well, if he’d forgotten it then it couldn’t have been pressing.

She was tossing back drinks like an expert, and he found himself reassessing his opinion of her a little. Matching dish sets and cleaning fits and something to forget that was there long before Ripper came into her life. Something to do with Janna, perhaps. People didn’t change their names without good reason. That's his next question, then. Why Jenny?

\---

Jenny swirled the clear liquid in her glass as she contemplated the nondescript painting one of her nieces had done hanging in the corner. It was better than making eye contact with the slimy man who was studying her much too intently. She knew that look. He was measuring her up. For what exactly? A duel? Another battle of the snark? Honestly she didn't have the energy.

She didn't want to think about it. Not about the Watchers Council, not about their tactics and certainly not about Rupert. Every time she did, she saw the hurt in his eyes when she had said no. If she could take it all back...well she probably wouldn't have but she would have been a lot gentler about it.

"Since I was 10." She said truthfully. "I took to watching the Elders and my mother taught me how to cast bones." Lela Kalderash had been one of the best fortune tellers in the clan, even the Elders had said so. To even be able to scry to a tenth of that power, made her feel proud.

\---

"Since you were ten?" he asked, not even bothering to try not to sound surprised.

Ripper had started early too, but still. That was young. Ethan couldn't quite recall what he had been doing at age ten, but it certainly hadn't involved magic. Elders, maybe, but no magic. He got the vague impression that he had wanted to be a soldier at some point as a child. That would have been a terrible career move.

"Did you like it? Learning magic from your family, I mean. Do you miss it?" Wait, that wasn't quite what he was going for. "After all, you're out here being Jenny Calendar. Rather far away from casting bones with your mum." He considered pressing the issue of the bone casting. Everything he had read on the topic had been so vague, and real expert were hard to come by.

\---

"My family is..." okay how would Jenny say this truthfully but not make him immediately take back the gin. "set in the old ways." She finished taking another sip. And that was putting it lightly. There were some days Uncle Enyos didn't leave his house based on the prophesies of the Elder Woman.

When she was with her family, magic had been more than just something that was talked about. It was something that sang in the air, saturated the atmosphere, you could feel it in your pores, practically hear it and smell it. Now here everyone thought her crystals were paperweights and the local magic shop had more duds in it than things that could actually do anything. It was disappointing.

Jenny shrugged as she finished her drink. "I didn't know any other way." She replied. "I was a Kalderash, I was going to do the Kalderash thing. Learn magic, serve the family, get married young and have lots of fat babies." She made a face as she took another brownie. "I go where they told me to go."

\---

Set in the old ways was a nice phrase. If you didn't think about it too hard, it could almost be a compliment! Only it never was. He shot his victim/drinking partner what he hoped was a sympathetic look and refilled her drink.

"I understand that the vampire needed minding, but they really didn't think through sending you to Southern California," he said dryly. "Not quite ideal for breeding loyalty to the old ways and the Old Country. All for the best, I think, though. A talent for disaster like yours would be wasted on fat babies."

Wait, did Ripper want children? He couldn't picture Ripper with children, but then again he for a long time he couldn't picture Ripper wearing tweed or teaching. And yet. The very idea stung. Ripper belonged in the dark with the rest of them, with Ethan, not picking out picket fences with a pretty young wife and babies. But he was getting ahead of himself. There was no pretty young wife or babies in sight, unless one counted Ripper's little mob of students. Speaking of...

"That little girl--Willow, she cried when she heard Rupert left you. Something about him dying." He laughed. "I think she got a bit carried away, acting like mummy dearest and daddy darling were calling it off."

\---

Jenny tilted her head in thanks when he refilled her drink. This felt better than ice cream, also probably less calories. Unfortunately there wasn't much of a reason to be watching her figure right now. She took another drink.

"The vampire must feel the pain he has caused our people. The curse must be eternal." Jenny recited from memory. as she raised her glass. It was possible the gin was getting on top of her a bit. Strange, usually her tolerance for alcohol was higher. "Vengeance will be the mission from now until the last of our brethren walk the earth." Uncle Enyos and the elder woman had told her that ever since it had become obvious she wasn't going to settle down like her sisters. Maybe they'd been planning this since she collected her first set of bones.

She did miss her family, Her parents and her siblings. Many many nieces and nephews. The sweet smell of smoke from the Elder Woman's hearth, the songs they would sing during worship. Watching her father and uncles bend various kinds of metals to make fascinating shapes. She could have stayed, gotten married to one of the local boys and had her herd of children. The thought of the life didn't completely disgust her...but there was just so much more of this world out there. So much she wanted to do and see. This had been the only way out.

Willow, that girl showed promise, as a Wicca and with computers. As a teacher she knew she couldn't play favorites but the little redhead with her eager attitude.... "She's a good one." Jenny nodded. Jenny should have known that Rupert would have taken it hard. A proposal was...different to him than it was to her. Not something you did by rote or entered into lightly. She should have realized that. She traced the rim of her glass. "I don't want to face them."

\---

Ah yes, the old standard. Eternal vengeance! Something in her turn of phrase--or her family's turn of phrase--sounded familiar. Made him think of the old days, Ripper lounging on Randall's miserable excuse for a couch and slurring something about A Watcher's Sacred Duty. Until the last. That was it. Until the last of us fall.

Except for how he could think of around a dozen Watchers who had grievously shirked their sacred duty, and that wasn't even counting Ripper because Ripper had gone back. Huh.

"Doesn't eternal vengeance get boring, though?" he asked. "Generally speaking, I mean. It's been a hundred years. Is anyone who knew the girl is still alive? I think that's the point where it stops being personal and starts being...being rules."

He was not entirely sure where he was going with that, besides picking at the thread of rules and duty that seem to be sticking out. If one picked at something long enough, it would fray. If one left something long enough, it would fray. How long had the Watchers' Council been around...?

Jenny's face warmed slightly when he brought up her student. Clearly Willow was a favorite. How was that for an odd thought--his clever, inherently destructive little pet was someone's favorite.  
"You don't have to face them," he said. "It's the summer, and the vampire's out of the country. Nothing stopping you giving notice and shipping off to..." Where? Somewhere far, somewhere bright. "Beijing, or something. What's stopping you?"

\---

Jenny smiled without mirth. "It's a way of life." She deadpanned before taking a drink. It had been ever since she was a little girl. The stories told to scare her and her siblings when they had been little were all about Angelus, what he had done to the girl, and the resulting massacre. Jenny's younger sister Florica'd had nightmares for weeks. Jenny herself had stayed up, looking out the window wondering what else was exactly out there.

People didn't exactly leave the Kalderash Clan. Well, not in Jenny's lifetime anyway. She'd moved to the States with her family when she was just a year old. Probably to keep track of Angel, she now realized. Maybe there had been some people who had left, but she certainly didn't know about them.

And if she were being honest with herself, Jenny felt a little honored to be able to serve the clan in some way. With the way all the elders said that people were losing touch with the old ways or that their ranks were getting smaller, Jenny felt it was her duty to, if not widen the ranks, to make sure neither they nor anyone else was attacked like that again.

"In this case it's not so much eternal vengeance as it is eternal watching." She admitted, taking another drink. "Angelus has been wandering around sewer tunnels all over the world. Not exactly hard." 

Oh that was a tempting idea, pack up her computer and a couple pairs of clothes and just go. But she had a job here, one that her boss had come to see her about (in between making sure she was okay) and rent and bills. And...a relationship she was trying to find hope to repair. "Right, and become a total stereotype. A wandering Gypsy."

\---

Anything could be a way of life if you tried hard enough. Chaos, order, stalking of various… varieties. Hm. Perhaps he should have taken the drinking a bit slower. Anyway.

“I’d still say it has to be boring. The Watching. Seen one sewer tunnel, you’ve seen them all, right? Speaking as someone who has seen a fair few…” He ran a hand over his face. Off topic. This was off topic.  
Maybe she was doing it on purpose, pushing him toward things he could ramble about so that he couldn’t interrogate her? Some sort of she-knew-that-he-knew thing? He didn’t think Ripper’s little girlfriend was that clever, but then again, maybe she was. Maybe that’s how you wound up when you had training, maybe you wound up a super secret agent of the Kalderash clan sneaking around manipulating people. His mind helpfully supplied an image of the rather despondent woman he was drinking with in a catsuit wielding a tranquilizer gun, and he had to suppress laughter. And then she made a joke about being a wandering Gypsy and he did laugh, in a not-very dignified fashion.

“Alright, stereotype, but who’d know? There’s lots of people who just… go. I did.” Oops. Again with the sincerity. Maybe she really was some sort of trained spy-person. A trained spy-person who had infiltrated Ripper’s school and his life and then broken his heart.

There we go. Back on topic. He grinned crookedly.

“Surely you don’t want to stay here, now. After that sort of row with someone you care about… You do care about him, don’t you?”

\---

Actually it was a very appealing prospect. See all the places her cyber coven kept on telling her about, she'd rarely been out of the country. Technically she was born in Eastern Europe but that didn’t really count since she had moved to the States when she was a year old. Wasn't this something people were supposed to do before they turned thirty? Something her mother was reminding her was getting closer and closer. See the world and pursue all kinds of weird interests? Well her weird interest was computers, and she was already getting paid to do that. So maybe Jenny was just a few steps ahead of the curve.

Besides this was getting her impromptu guest off topic and she really wanted it to stay that way. He was a friend of Rupert's, any way to figure out how her guy was doing...

He wasn't really her guy anymore was he. No she'd taken that and blown it clean out of the water. All because....the too fast reason didn't seem so smart and reasonable anymore. Maybe....maybe it was another reason. Maybe she was just too tired to think.

"Of course I do!" That came out more vehemently than expected. "I never stopped just because I said no to the ring!"

Her mouth clamped shut. She had not wanted to say that.

\---

Ha, that was sure to get a rise out of her. He had been being far too gentle and wait what.

Look at that. Even Ethan's disaster of a mind was capable of coming to a full stop. He was going to laugh about that later. Probably.

"The ring?" he asked.

A dim and faraway part of his mind informed him that he had just crossed the line from 'slightly too drunk for this conversation' to 'far, far too sober for this conversation' and he obliged it by pouring himself another drink--glass full, glass drained. Not much better. Probably needed something stronger than alcohol.

"I-he-Bloody hell, woman, Ripper asked you to MARRY him?!"

And bugger the fact that it made a bit of sense, because Ripper'd always had a weakness for pretty things that came with a side of breaking rules, and Jenny certainly seemed like a safe breaking of stupid rules.

"He asked you to MARRY him? What was he thinking?!" He's going to kill Ripper. Or... or something. Surely something in the service of Chaos would take a middle aged moron of a Watcher as sacrifice. Another drink. Definitely insufficient. "Bloody idiot's going to sulk for a month. What was he thinking?" Wait. Another thing. "You turned him down? What were you thinking?!"

Well, besides the middle age moron Watcher with a Duty but. That part of kicking Ripper and his tweeds (tweeds!) to the curb he could understand. But still!

\---

Jenny closed her eyes to try to block the flow of tears that were creeping their way back in. She'd been crying more than enough these past few days, weeks? she didn't know anymore. Was Ethan coming here proof that the relationship was over? Was he seeing what was left behind? Maybe it would be better to leave. Start over. Hell she couldn't enjoy the fact that he looked like a beached fish.

Yeah nobody was drunk enough for this conversation. She was now explaining how she had turned down Rupert Giles to a man who seemed to live to piss him off. She grabbed the bottle once he was done with it and refilled her own glass.

Jenny nodded, head down. If she closed her eyes she could still see it. The apartment, the ring, the hopeful look in his eye. She'd crushed all of that. Nice going Jenny. Really nice.

"Not what you were thinking was it." She deadpanned.

"I was thinking...that I had just recently been possessed and almost drowned and our lives are a never ending parade of danger and Rupert was just so scared of losing someone else that he had to do whatever he could to keep me around." No that...that wasn't all of it. Jenny was drunker than she thought apparently.

"I was thinking of my sisters and how they all got married and settled down and are having tons of kids and how they always ask me about where I am and what I'm doing and how they barely talk to their husbands and I was thinking about my mother and how she always talked about..." okay air was a thing she needed "finding the right path for you and obviously that means my sisters are on the wrong path. How do I even know if I'M on the right one, I'm only here because that was where Uncle Enyos told me I had to go. We don't even live together. He barely knows anything about me! What if...what if I say yes because that's what I'm supposed to do and end up regretting it and it hurts more? I don't want to hurt him."

And it seemed in her quest she had done just that

\---

He was going to kill Ripper for being such a bloody idiot. He was going to kill him and then torture the woman into insanity in front of him and wait, that wouldn’t work, Ripper never really was into the torture unless there was a purpose behind it. Also he would be dead. That would be a minor obstacle. Maybe he’d just kill Jenny, then, though if the last few months were anything to go by it would likely be a blow to the forces of Chaos were she to die. Maybe he could balance it out by killing them both, only then there would be the children to reckon with and what would he do with his life if he couldn’t pester Ripper? Riling Diedre and Philip up didn’t have quite the same benefits.

“Not what you were thinking, was it?” Jenny deadpanned. He hadn’t been thinking much at all, or at least he had been thinking about the old days and had somewhat assumed that Ripper had done something the violent side of stupid, not like this.

This was a whole new level of things Ripper wasn’t supposed to bloody do. So it just bloody figured he’d go full tilt into doing them because being a bloody moron was one of Ripper’s defining character traits.

Jenny looked like she was tearing up, and he really did need something stronger than alcohol to deal with this because the only option that didn’t involve dangling Ripper by his bloody entrails above an altar and therefore having to somehow live without him looked like it was rapidly going to include things like being the more put together person in the room and what was he supposed to do with that? His hands were shaking and his skin was crawling and none of this would do. He put his glass down with an audible clink and let her finish her explanatory babbling.

“Ripper has no right–“ he says, once she’s done, colder and harsher than he’d have intended if he’d been in any state to intend things, “–to try to KEEP things. Or people.” Or people who were things to him, or–or… anything. “You lose people, that’s what happens. That’s–that’s entropy, see. Chaos.” Familiar territory. “And I mean, you’re the bleedin’ fortune-teller, can’t you read your own future? That’s what it’s for, right? Picking a path? I’d vote the one without tweedy pompous possessive Watcher bastards, but what do I know.” He pauses. “I don’t actually bloody know. I’m here after all.” 

What he was going to do, what he was going to do was burn Ripper’s stupid clothes. That was an idea. No more tweed. No more bloody elbow patches. Maybe he’d act like a real person then.

“You can’t live life without breaking a few eggs. Or hearts. Or bones. Or… people. Sitting here crying about hurting him when you scrub your hands raw and bleed over it, that’s all backwards.”

\---

She took a minute to take a few deep cleansing breaths, try to get herself under control. No need to bawl like a child around slimy Ethan. No need to give anyone any ammunition. Besides the news that Rupert had proposed looked like it was giving him an aneurysm. And that was kind of fun in a small, cruel way.

Oh wait, now HE was babbling. Well that was unexpected. What exactly was the relationship between him and Rupert. They'd never gone into the whole exes thing, maybe they'd both assumed what was in the past just wasn't worth talking about. Clearly that was dead wrong. And so was he. "That's not what you tell a fortune for." Or not what it was supposed to be for. "You can never tell the complete future. I could ask it the same question twice and get two different answers. Obviously you've never told a fortune in your life."

"Isn't that the whole reason to try?" She asked contemplatively. "If it's worth it, it should be worth the pain.”

———

“Of course I’ve never told a bloody fortune, I’m a Chaos worshipper, you—you infernally stupid woman. Doesn’t exactly make for a stable future.”

Oh, she was an idealist. Worth the pain, really. Ripper sure knew how to pick ‘em, didn’t he? Regrettable, really, that Janna—Jenny seemed to actually be the type to do the whole suffering love martyr thing. Through good times and bad, stable futures and all that.

Well, bugger that. Not like the lying spy lady who'd spent a solid day possessed by something or other really had a monopoly on the whole stability thing.

"Sorry. That was rude." He was slipping back into business voice. Fake sincerity, fake propriety. She probably wouldn't buy it, drunk and drugged or not, but it was a step in the more put together person in the room direction and away from hysteria. It's Chaos, and Chaos is his business as well as the driving force in his life. "I don't actually think you're stupid. I just--he's an idiot. A complete and utter bleeding idiot." If he knows Ripper, and damn it all he does know Ripper, he's a complete and utter bleeding idiot who is drinking himself into a coma. He can work with that. He's worked with that before. "I was going to say something in his defense but I actually genuinely can't. Honestly? Good on you for saying no." He raises his glass for a slightly wobbly toast and tries to keep from babbling more. "Pain may be worth it, but idiots really aren't."

And as soon as he left, he was going to track that idiot down and set him back on the path of Chaos if he had to drag him down it personally. Really. His own feelings aside, this was something of a boon, wasn't it? And his own feelings less aside...well, he'd thought the damn tweeds had been a sign of rock bottom, but this? This clearly was a cry for help, as close as Ripper would come to begging for an intervention from an old friend. And who was Ethan to refuse?


End file.
